The present disclosure relates generally to a central plant or central energy facility configured to serve the energy loads of a building or campus. The present disclosure relates more particularly to the use of an economic model predictive control (EMPC) strategy to optimize the operation of a plant.
A central plant typically include multiple subplants configured to serve different types of energy loads. For example, a central plant may include a chiller subplant configured to serve cooling loads, a heater subplant configured to serve heating loads, and/or an electricity subplant configured to serve electric loads. A central plant purchases resources from utilities to run the subplants to meet the loads.
Some central plants include energy storage. Energy storage may be a tank of water that stores hot water for heating, an ice tank for cooling, and/or battery storage. In the presence of real-time pricing from utilities, it may be advantageous to manipulate the time that a certain resource or energy type is consumed. Instead of producing the resource exactly when it is required by the load, it can be optimal to produce that resource at a time when the production cost is low, store it, and then use it when the resource needed to produce that type of energy is more expensive.
It can be difficult and challenging to optimally allocate the energy loads across the assets of the central plant. An EMPC strategy can be an effective way to optimize the operation of all of these assets.